My friend Stephanie is pregnant with a baby girl due sometime around Thanksgiving. Yesterday was her baby shower and, as I’ve done for many other pregnant friends this year, I wanted to give her something handmade. With Emma taking up most of my time these days, I knew there was no way I’d be able to make even the simplest of quilts, so I decided to make a blanket inspired by a myubby blanket that one of my high school friends sent for Emma.

Emma’s blanket has minky on one side, fleece on the other, satin binding and was embroidered with Emma’s name and birthday. For my version, I used yellow minky on one side, a light blue animal print flannel on the other, and yellow polka dot quilting cotton for the binding. The dimensions were determined by the width of the flannel, so the finished blanket ended up being about 40″ square. I bought half a yard of the yellow polka dot fabric for the binding, assuming it would be plenty but it was close — it produced juuust enough. I cut it on the bias in 4″ strips for a finished double-fold binding width of about an inch.

Overall, blankets don’t get much easier than this. It took me about 3 hours spread over the last week to put it together, and the most time-consuming part may have actually been pinning! Fresh from my first experience with minky fabric (when I made the car seat cover), I knew that pins — and lots of them — would be crucial to keeping the two layers of fabric together when I sewed the binding.

I think the blanket turned out great. And I ended up loving the pairing of yellow and light blue. From my own recent experience, I know Stephanie will get PLENTY of pink from other people, so I wanted to give baby Fiona something a little different.

I forgot to buy a card to go with the gift, so I dug into my rather large stash of scrapbook paper and cardstock and threw together this little elephant card. I cut out the elephant shape to match what was on the flannel side of the blanket! I should make little cards more often. It’s a fun thing to do, and only takes about 10 minutes!

p.s. I shared this on Sew Much Ado’s We Did It Wednesday on October 2.

My friend Erin stopped by the other day to drop off the carseat adapter for my awesome new BOB stroller. (Can’t wait to start taking Emma on some long walks!) As she was leaving, I noticed that she had a nice comfy-looking pad wrapped around the handle of her son’s carseat. I didn’t immediately know what it was for, but she pointed out that when you start carrying the carseat around a lot — something I haven’t really done since we haven’t started taking Emma out much yet — it’s often easiest to carry it in the crook of your arm. And that starts to hurt after a while!

Update: This post used to give an overview of how I made my arm pad, which I did by following a tutorial found on another blog. Two years later, I got a series of emails from someone at a company that makes and sells a similar arm pad accusing me of patent infringement. I consider myself fairly smart but I’m definitely not a lawyer and while I’m not convinced I did anything wrong, I also don’t really feel like getting into a huge argument.

So I’ve deleted the “how to” portion of this post. There are still many tutorials online you can use to make your own, and several companies and Etsy sellers that make arm pads for purchase.

Bottom line: I made an arm pad and since I used the same fabric, it conveniently matches my carseat canopy. Fun!

Emma’s not quite 5 weeks old, and I’m happy to report that I found some time to do a little sewing last week and made a canopy for her carseat! I noticed a ton of women with these at mom’s group — probably because there’s a company that is pretty liberal with a coupon code that lets you get one for only the cost of shipping. (Which is about $13. I probably spent right about that on the fabric needed for this one.) I was planning to just order from them, but most of the options were backordered until later this week. I figured that was a sign to just make one myself with fabrics of my choice!

With my sewing machine temporarily relocated to the dining room table, everything was right where I needed it and thankfully, this was a pretty simple project. I checked out a few tutorials that I found online (the best, I think, was from Make It Do) and took a closer look at one belonging to another mom last Tuesday at mom’s group. After that, I just winged it!

Pinning & prepping

I used a black and white floral cotton print for the outside and mint green minky on the inside. The fabric measured 36″ x 42″ to start, and I used a 5/8″ seam allowance. I also rounded the corners, as you can see in the photos above. For the two straps, I cut strips that measured 5″ x 8″ and folded them in half lengthwise to make finished straps of ~2.25″ x 7.5″ using a ~1/4″ seam allowance. I used sew-on velcro for the fasterner and positioned the straps in the middle of the cover about 5.5 inches apart. Pretty simple, really.

I’d never used minky before, and it was a little challenging. Fortunately, I had just come across this post from Sew Much Ado on Pinterest, and the tips she offered were very helpful — especially the advice to PIN, PIN, PIN. I had one big false start and had to tear out the whole seam of the cover because I neglected to check the stitching on both sides. Turns out my bobbin threading had gotten off kilter and my stitches were loose and looping on the back side. Sigh! It seems I’m destined to do some seam ripping with any project!

It worked much better the second time around after I double-checked my machine threading, and the finished product turned out great! I finished sewing on the straps last night, so I can’t wait to use it on Emma’s next outing!

I realized the other day as I was finishing up Kaylynne’s baby blanket that it’s been a whole year since I took my first sewing class last July. As a kid, I loved drawing and making things, but as an adult, I’d shifted more to digital forms of creativity like graphic design, web design, and some dabbling in photography — so my “return” to crafting, and to creating things that I can actually hold and give, has been a lot of fun.

I skimmed back through my “crafts” category for the past year and WOW! I made even more cool things than I remembered!

Favorite? That title goes to the appliqued MIT onesie I made to give to Jose on Father’s Day — not because it was easy (because it wasn’t thanks to a steep learning curve) but because it has the most sentimental value at this point.

Most rewarding? This has to be the zig zag quilt I made for Erin’s son Keagan. It was the second quilt I made, but the pattern was just complicated enough that it posed a LOT of challenges for a newbie like me. I was so proud of myself when I finished it, and found that it actually looked good.

Most useful? Probably the card wallet, actually, even though that’s a little unexpected! I carry it in my purse every day and pull it out several times a week to dig for my Jimmy Johns punch card, or Bullritos card, or (these days) Babies R Us membership card, or whatnot.

My current “to sew” list is long and even more varied than the first year. Predictably, there are a lot of baby items on it but I’ll try to work in some other things too. And hey — if there’s something out there you’ve seen, maybe I’ll sew it for you. All you have to do is ask!

Hello!

I'm Sarah, a NASA engineer by day and quilter by night. I live in Houston with my husband and our two young daughters. I've had this ol' blog for more than 15 years, and these days it's home to my quilting work, snippets of family life, and occasional musings on my engineering career.